Why is only a majority vote required to amend the most important document in California, its constitution, but a two-thirds vote is required for establishing a budget? Am I the only one who thinks this is backward? No wonder the constitution contains so much junk and the state is becoming ungovernable and heading toward bankruptcy.

John Dunse

San Jose

Two-thirds rule is there for a reason

In response to Ellen Smith (Letters, May 16) calling for an end of the two-thirds rule, I can only repeat what my grandfather always told me:

“Don’t tear down a fence until you understand why it was put there.”

Gary Zollweg

San Jose

Rising sea would flood development

Arizona developer DMB is forging ahead with its audacious mini-city on 1,400 acres of former baylands in Redwood City. This is “raw land” that lies below sea level — exactly the wrong place to put 30,000 new residents. Bay shoreline areas are at risk as the oceans rise due to the melting of glaciers and ice sheets in the Arctic, Antarctica and Greenland.

New maps by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) show $24 billion of infrastructure and 100,000 residents already “at risk” in San Mateo County, including Redwood Shores, Seaport Center, Pacific Shores, Foster City, San Francisco Airport and Highway 101. Placing more people in harm’s way is pure folly.

The sobering lessons from flooding in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and other low-lying areas around the world should be heeded. We should direct our scarce public dollars to support development in the right places, such as Redwood City’s downtown, and to protect our existing developed at-risk areas.

Lennie Roberts

Legislative Advocate Committee for Green Foothills Palo Alto

Sri Lanka must face Tamil grievances As a researcher at San Jose State University on Indian diasporas, I feel that the Sri Lankan government (Page 1A, May 19) might have scored a military victory over the LTTE, but it could just be a lull in the storm unless Mahinda Rajapaksa initiates bold peace efforts to find a political solution to the problem. There will be many Tamil Gandhis coming forward to participate in the provincial elections if these are now announced. To my mind, the Sinhala government should address the genuine grievances of the sizable Tamil Diaspora so that they may continue to nurse transnational integration in their host countries together with the development of their homeland — Sri Lanka.

Baltej Singh Mann

Visiting Professor of Global Studies San Jose State University

Payroll at center of California’s problem

Now that the special election is over it’s now time to address the real problem, the size of the state payroll. California has roughly 238,000 public employees, most of them unionized. They are the 800-pound gorilla of special interests striking fear into elected officials at every level. They stubbornly cling to self-interests and fight any attempt to reduce their impact on budgets with an ongoing campaign of fear-mongering and political intimidation even as the state descends into financial chaos.

As the private sector cuts jobs and benefits for employees in order to remain solvent, California public employee unions fight any meaningful givebacks. It’s time for the public employee unions to step up and become part of the solution instead of continuing to be part of the problem.

Keith Brumbaugh

San Jose

Make lawmakers pay for their own cars

The governor is looking for ways to cut expenses. I have the following suggestion:

Discontinue the practice of providing automobiles for our pampered legislators and recall all vehicles. All of us have to provide our own transportation; no reason why these folks cannot do the same.

Ralph Wilhelms

Sunnyvale

A chance to run clean campaigns

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (Opinion, May 18) has it right in calling for support of the national Fair Elections Now Act. Instead of politicians having to “dial for dollars” to fund today’s excessively expensive campaigns, we could have candidates who have proven broad support receive enough money to run a campaign. This takes the wealthy special interests right out of the picture.

California has its own pilot Fair Elections Act coming on the June 2010 ballot which will let secretary of state candidates get out of the pay-to-play system which plagues California politics from the governor’s office on down. In Maine and Arizona, the voters and the politicians love it, and it has opened up the political process beyond the well-connected. With the financial meltdown, voters are disillusioned with the current system, but now have a chance to put things right by allowing elected officials to run campaigns with integrity and accountability.

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